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How many frames

Ok here we go . How many of you guys use a five frame nuc , four frame, three frame, two frame, and finally the half frames for a mini nuc
for your mating nucs?
I would like to know why you did it and if there are any benifits from one frame count to another and also dose the size of the frame matter from deep to medium size to the half frames.

Re: How many frames

I use 4 frames and a indoor feeder by the time I sell remove feeder add new frame they will build it out fast. Food as a convenience keep the queen fat and lot of calories they will use building all that comb. Happy nuc is full of bees and capped brood.

Re: How many frames

medium split into 3 - 3 frames with division boards, you can put a super over this setup with a queen excluder. Just watch for queens running over the boards. 3 individual covers or a feed sack stapled for each section is much safer.

Re: How many frames

Glad you started this thread, I've been wondering the same thing. I have been using 5 frame nucs for a while now, both medium and deeps.

Advantages
1. They have plenty of room to build up before they try to swarm
2. Queen has lots of room to lay and demonstrate her ability to lay a nice brood pattern
3. Come late summer I can throw another 5 frame nuc on top of them and overwinter them like that very easily. Or if they are strong in summer go ahead and super them to draw out more comb.
4. Frames are easily moved to and from my production colonies. Which I do seems like constantly.

Disadvantages
1. Takes a lot of bees to stock all my mating nucs.
2. Takes a lot longer to find the queen on 5 frames.
3. 75 or 100 5 frame nucs in one yard with a saturation of drone mother colonies is a lot of bees in one area. Given if you were raising queens with a 1/4 of the population in a smaller nuc you could probably keep a lot more in one area. Not a big deal if you have yards with a steady trickling flow or if you have lots of yards to spread them out but driving all over regularly to pull queens and plant cells does burn through the gas.

I'm sure there is more for both categories that I'm not thinking of right now.

Joe Latshaw showed me a nuc (4 half frame) that he uses and I've been thinking about adding some to the mating yards just to try them out and try something different. I like to let queens lay for 3 weeks before I ship them and that would be hard to do with the smaller nucs before they would be getting the urge to swarm.

If I were only doing a few nucs I would highly recommend 5 frames nucs. Either medium of Deeps.

That's my 2 cents. I look forward to everyone's thoughts and suggestions on this topic.

The fence hanging nucs that held five half sized deep frames were really great. I only had a little problem with earwigs congregating on the moist fence side of the nuc. They didn't seem to bother the bees, but they were all around. It was really nice on my back-no bending and they were off the ground away from pr editors, male dogs, etc. Made great use of my small acreage. I never used the window, so skip that unless you want a novelty.

Here's another one that I made, but did not use. But would work in a pinch. Just divide a cardboard nuc box and make two entrances. DONE!

The small foam nucs were from the dollar store. I turned them into nucs in about 10 minutes each. Just emergency small nucs if I needed some in a pinch, but they actually take deep half frames and worked perfectly. You just need to secure these from blowing over since they are so light and top heavy. I stuck them in between large pots of plants.

I made a few out of Dadant deeps. They also worked well. I bought them for overwintering, although when it came right down to it, I did not have the guts to try overwintering four tiny colonies. I removed two dividers and have two colonies with about 10 mini deep frames each.

I made these out of scrap stuff from a job site, which determined the size. They did not hold enough bees to my cooler spring temps, but worked fine in later in the summer.
These took the smallest amount of bees to get started.

I brushed bees from two colonies into a box, let the older foragers fly back to the original hives and scooped up the remaining young bees onto foundationless frames with just a guide:

screened bottom with slide in foam insert.

If you want more details, just post a question. It may take me a day or two to get back to you. I am still busy with fall chores.

Re: How many frames

In the past I have used either 5 frame nucs or the queen castle from Brushy. The queen castle has 4 compartment with two deep frames each. Although they worked OK, I'd say that two frames are too difficult to manage. This winter I plan to build 3 compartment deeps as mentioned by
AmericasBeekeeper. I think this will be a nice trade-off between the 5- and 2-frame stuff I've used in the past. I do like Lauri's top picture, but I'm too cheap to invest in those feeders I generally just use a hole saw to cut into the separate tops and use a mason jar as a feeder. This way you get 3 queens per hive body.

Re: How many frames

I built some 5-frame deep nucs to use as mating nucs. I then built a split division board feeder to divide thenuc into two 2-frame mating nucs. I used a feed bag inner cover. Slits in the inner cover made it easy to fill the feeder without fully opening the hive. When I wanted to combine two sides I just smoked heavily, pulled the feeder, stuck an empty comb in its place and closed it up.

I have three of these I'm overwintering. Two I put a 5-frame deep super on. The other I'm leaving as a 5-frame nuc.

I made the nucs out of 15/32 plywood. I had one where the parts warped slightly before I assembled it. There wasn't a problem with the frames fitting. But, the divider feeder had a gap at the bottom on onse that let bees through. I ended up only using one side.

Re: How many frames

I used three frame nucs both deep and medium. I also tried a couple of the mini nucs but had trouble keeping them from getting robbed.
Five frame nucs take too long to find the queen when its time to cage and replant new cells. So the three frame nucs where my favorite. When it was time to break everything down in fall it was easy to combine them since the frames where standard size.

Re: How many frames

5 frame Coates Plywood nucs, Plywood mating Queen Castles. Nucs work for the spring trapping season then off for expanding from the Queen Castles queens. Queen castles allow me to change the amount of space for feeders or as they expand without a bunch of manipulating by moving / removing the divider. All deep frames for brood. I am first to admit I need another yard, I am 5 wide and one section I have two QC deep on top of a standard hive. Just a pain.

“Why do we fall, sir? So that we might learn to pick ourselves up” Alfred Pennyworth Batman Begins (2005)

Re: How many frames

I only use one size frame. As far as different numbers of frames, most of beekeeping is managing space. This is even more critical when you only have a few bees. Having the right size allows two frames to make a mating nuc that can actually get stronger and then expand into five frames and then eight frames etc.

Re: How many frames

Originally Posted by Michael Bush

I only use one size frame. As far as different numbers of frames, most of beekeeping is managing space. This is even more critical when you only have a few bees. Having the right size allows two frames to make a mating nuc that can actually get stronger and then expand into five frames and then eight frames etc.

Re: How many frames

>I know you love the medium frames, I'm also a fan. Do you notice better matings between 2, 3, 4, 5, or 8 frame boxes?

As long as they are strong (high density of bees) I don't think it matters much. But when you first set up a nuc they aren't so strong (drifting) and having more frames of bees to start off might help but not enough, in my opinion, to be worth it. I can set up more nucs with the same amount of bees when I do 2 and get more queens mated with the same number of bees used as a result.

Re: How many frames

I use half width (10 frame) boxes as Nucs, so that two Nucs fit perfectly on a full size hive body. They take 4 frames as they are slightly narrower than 5 frames. But I like having the extra space on the sides.

It means there's no need to mess around with different size frames and boxes, and they can be used as supers as well if needed.

You can easily make them into 2 frame divided Nucs as well, and combine if one side fails to get a mated queen.